xxiii, 359 pages 23 cm

Lecture I: introductory -- The problem: -- How the church passed from the sermon on the mount to the Nicene creed; the change in spirit coincident with a change in soil -- The need of caution: two preliminary considerations -- 1. A religion relative to the whole mental attitude of an age: hence need to estimate the general attitude of the Greek mind during the first three centuries A.D. -- 2. Every permanent change in religious belief and usage rooted in historical conditions: roots of the gospel in Judaism, but of fourth century Christianity -- the key to historical -- in Hellenism -- The method: -- Evidence as to process of change scanty, but ample and representative as to ante-Nicene Greek thought and post-Nicene Christian thought -- Respects in which evidence defective -- Two resulting tendencies: 1. To overrate the value of the surviving evidence -- 2. To under-estimate opinions no longer accessible or known only through opponents -- Hence method, the correlation of antecedents and consequents -- Antecedents: sketch of the phenomena of Hellenism -- Consequents: changes in original Christian ideas and usages -- Attitude of mind required -- 1. Demand upon attention and imagination -- 2. Personal prepossessions to be allowed for -- 3. Need to observe under-currents, e.g. -- (a) The dualistic hypothesis, its bearing on baptism and exorcism -- (b) The nature of religion, e.g. its relation to conscience -- History as scientific study: the true apologia in religion -- Lecture II: Greek education -- The first step a study of environment, particularly as literary -- The contemporary Greek world an educated world in a special literary sense

I. Its forms varied, but all literary: -- Grammar -- Rhetoric -- A "lecture room" philosophy -- II. Its influence shown by: -- 1. Direct literary evidence -- 2. Recognized and lucrative position of the teaching profession -- 3. Social position of its professors -- 4. Its persistent survival up to to-day in general education, in special terms and usages -- Into such an artificial habit of mind Christianity came -- Lecture III. Greek and Christian exegesis -- To the Greek the mystery of writing, the reverence for antiquity, the belief in inspiration, gave the ancient poets a unique value -- Homer, his place in moral education; used by the Sophists in ethics, physics, metaphysics, &c. -- Apologies for this use culminate in allegory, especially among the Stoics -- The allegoric temper widespread, particularly in things religious -- Adopted by Hellenistic Jews, especially at Alexandria; Philo -- Continued by early Christian exegesis in varied schools, chiefly as regards the prophets, in harmony with Greek thought, and as a main line of apologetic -- Application to the New Testament writings by the Gnostics and the Alexandrines -- Its aid as solution of the old testament problem, especially in Origen -- Reactions both Hellenic and Christian: viz. in -- 1. The apologists' polemic against Greek mythology -- 2. The philosophers' polemic against Christianity -- 3. Certain Christian schools, especially the Antiochene -- Here hampered by dogmatic complications -- Use and abuse of allegory -- the poetry of life -- Alien to certain drifts of the modern spirit, viz. -- 1. Historic handling of literature -- 2. Recognition of the living voice of God -- Lecture IV. Greek and Christian rhetoric -- The period one of widely diffused literary culture -- The rhetorical schools, old and new -- Sophistic largely pursued the old lines of rhetoric, but also philosophized and preached professionally -- Its manner of discourse; its rewards -- Objections of earnest men; reaction led by stoics like Epictetus -- Significance for Christianity -- Primitive Christian "prophesying" v. later "preaching"

Preaching of composite origin: its essence and form, e.g. in fourth century, A.D.: preachers sometimes itinerant -- Summary and conclusions -- Lecture V. Christianity and Greek philosophy -- Abstract ideas among the Greeks, who were hardly aware of the different degrees of precision in mathematics and philosophy -- Tendency to define strong with them, apart from any criterion; hence dogmas -- Dogmatism, amid decay of originality: reaction towards doubt; yet dogmatism regnant -- "Palestinian philosophy," a complete contrast -- Fusion of these in the old catholic church achieved through an underlying kinship of ideas -- Explanations of this from both sides -- Philosophical Judaism as abridge, e.g., in allegorism and cosmology -- Christian philosophy partly apologetic, partly speculative -- Alarm of conservatives: the second century one of transition and conflict -- The issue, compromise, and a certain habit of mind -- Summary answer to the main question -- The Greek mind seen in: -- 1. The tendency to define -- 2. The tendency to speculate -- 3. The point of emphasis, i.e. orthodoxy -- Further development in the west -- But Greece the source of the true damnosa hereditas -- Lecture VI. Greek and Christian ethics -- The average morality of the age: its moral philosophy -- An age of moral reformation -- 1. Relation of ethics to philosophy and life -- Revived practial bent of stoicism; Epictetus -- A moral gymnastic cultivated -- (1) Askesis: Philo, Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom -- (2) The ''philosopher'' or moral reformer -- 2. The contents of ethical teaching, marked by a religious reference -- Epictetus' two maxims, ''follow nature'', ''follow God'' -- Christian ethics show agreement amid difference; based upon the divine command; idea of sin; agreement most emphasized at first, i.e. the importance of conduct -- 1. Tone of earliest Christian writings: the ''two ways'' -- Apostolic constitutions, Bk. i. -- 2. Place of discipline in Christian life: Puritan ideal v. later corpus permixtum -- Further developments due to Greece: -- 1. A church within the church: Askesis, monasticism -- 2. Resulting deterioration of average ethics: Ambrose of Milan -- Complete victory of Greek ethics seen in the basis of modern society

Lecture VII. Greek and Christian theology -- I. The creator -- The idea of one God, begotten of the unity and order of the world, and connected with the ideas of personality and mind -- Three elements in the idea -- Creator, moral governor, absolute being -- Growth of idea of a beginning: monism and dualism -- 1. Monism of the stoics: natura , naturata and naturans: a beginning not necessarily involved -- 2. Dualism, platonic: creation recognized -- Syncretistic blending of these as to process: logos idea common -- Hence Philo's significance: God as Creator: monistic and dualistic aspects -- His terms for the forces in their plurality and unity: after all, God is creator, even Father, of the world -- Early Christian idea of a single supreme artificer took permanent root; but questions as to mode emerged, and the first answers were tentative -- 1. Evolutional type -- supplemented by idea of a lapse -- 2. Creational type accepted -- There remained: -- (i.) The ultimate relation of matter to God: dualistic solutions: Basilides' platonic theory the basis of later doctrine, though not at once recognized -- (ii.) The creator's contact with matter: medication hypothesis: the logos solution -- (iii.) Imperfection and evil: monistic and dualistic answers, especially Marcion's -- But the divine unity overcomes all: position of Irenaeus, &c., widely accepted: Origen's cosmogony a theodicy -- Prevalence of the simper view seen in monarchianism -- Results -- Lecture VIII. Greek and Christian theology -- II. The moral governor -- A. The Greek idea -- 1. Unity of God and unity of the world: will and order -- Order, number, necessity and destiny: intelligent force and law -- The cosmos as a city-state -- 2. New conceptions of the divine nature: justice and goodness in connection with providence, and a tendency to synthesis -- Through two stages -- In the use of the term God -- 3. The problem of evil emerges: attempts at solution -- (a) Universality of providence denied (Platonic and oriental) -- (b) Reality of apparent evils denied (Stoic) -- (c) Theory of human freedom -- Its relation to universality of providence: the stoical theodicy exemplified in Epictetus -- B. The Christian idea -- Primitive Christianity a contrast: two main conceptions

1. Wages for work done -- 2. Positive law -- God a lawgiver and judge -- Difficulties in fusing the two types -- (i.) Forgiveness and law -- Marcion's ditheism -- Solution in Irenaeus, Tertullian, &c.: result -- (ii.) The moral governor and free-will -- Marcion's dualistic view of moral evil -- Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus -- Tertullian and the Alexandrines -- Origen's comprehensive theodicy by aid of Stoicism and Neo-Platonism -- Lecture IX. Greek and Christian theology -- III. God as the supreme being -- Christian theology shaped by Greece, though on a Jewish basis -- A. The idea and its development in Greek philosophy -- Parallel to Christian speculation in three stages -- 1. Transcendence of God -- History of the idea before and after Plato -- Its two forms, transcendent proper and supra-cosmic -- Blending with religious feeling, e.g. in Philo -- 2. Revelation of the transcendent -- Through intermediaries: -- (i.) Mythological -- (ii.) Philosophical, e.g. in Philo -- 3. Distinctions in the nature of God -- Philo's logos -- Conceived both monistically and dualistically in relation to God -- But especially under metaphor of generation -- B. The idea and its development in Christian theology -- 1. Here the idea of transcendence is at first absent -- Present in the apologists -- But God as transcendent (v. supra-cosmic) first emphasized by Basilides and the Alexandrines -- 2. Mediation ( = Revelation) of the transcendent, a vital problem -- Theories of modal manifestation -- Dominant idea that of modal existence: -- (i.) As manifold: so among certain Gnostics -- (ii.) As constituting a unity -- Its Gnostic forms -- Relation of the logoi to the logos, especially in Justin -- The issue is the logos doctrine of Irenaeus -- 3. Distinctions in the nature of God based on the logos -- (i.) Theories as to the genesis of the Logos, analogous to those as to the world -- Theories guarding the ''sole monarchy,'' thus endangered, culminate in Origen's idea of eternal generation -- (ii.) Theories of the nature of the logos determines by either the supra-cosmic or transcendental idea of God -- Origen marks a stage -- and but a stage -- in the controversies -- Greek elements in the subsequent developments -- Ousia; its history -- Difficulty felt in applying it to God -- As also with homoousios: need of another term -- Hypostasis: its history -- Comes to need definition by a third term -- Resumé of the use of these terms; the reign of dogmatist -- Three underlying assumptions -- a legacy of the Greek spirit -- 1. The importance of metaphysical distinctions -- 2. Their absolute truth -- 3. The nature of God's perfection

Includes bibliographical references and index

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